LO­GIS­TIC SER­VICES

for cater­ing de­mands from fash­ion in­dus­try

Saf­ex­press plans high for cater­ing de­mands from fash­ion in­dus­try

Vi­neet Kanaujia

Ac­cord­ing to Vi­neet Kanaujia, Vice Pres­i­dent - Mar­ket­ing, Saf­ex­press, the fash­ion lo­gis­tics in­dus­try is ever tran­scend­ing. Many in­ter­na­tional brands have en­tered the In­dian fash­ion in­dus­try. Th­ese brands with strong fi­nan­cial back­ing have led to in­creased com­pe­ti­tion in fash­ion mar­ket. This has in turn led to in­creased pres­sure on cost re­duc­tion, for which op­ti­mis­ing sup­ply chain and lo­gis­tics costs is vi­tal.

In Kanaujia’s opin­ion, the prod­uct de­mand is very un­cer­tain in the fash­ion lo­gis­tics in­dus­try and flex­i­ble sup­ply chain sys­tems are needed to re­spond to the ever-chang­ing mar­kets. The prod­uct de­mand de­pends on sea­sonal vari­a­tions, high in­fla­tion­ary mar­ket and avail­abil­ity of cheaper sub­sti­tutes. Also, E-com­merce in In­dia is grow­ing at a very fast pace. The lo­gis­tics chal­lenges of such on­line busi­ness mod­els are nu­mer­ous. To counter them, sup­ply chains have to be ef­fi­cient, flex­i­ble and ac­cu­rate.

cy­cles. The con­sumer de­mands are ev­er­chang­ing and in or­der to make prof­its, fash­ion ap­parel retailers need to adopt ‘speed-tomar­ket’ ap­proach to har­ness trends not em­braced by their com­peti­tors. Such speed can only be pro­vided by lo­gis­tics providers hav­ing mar­ket ex­per­tise and huge national pres­ence,” Kanaujia pointed out.

Ac­cord­ing to him, new pol­icy ini­tia­tives have been taken by In­dian govern­ment which will have sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the tex­tile and ap­parel in­dus­try. On the re­tail front the de­ci­sion to al­low 100 per cent FDI in sin­gle brand re­tail and 51 per cent in multi brand re­tail will have a strong im­pact on for­eign

in­vest­ment in fash­ion re­tail and hence on its sup­ply chain and lo­gis­tics re­quire­ments.

do­mes­tic mar­ket sce­nario

Kanaujia high­lighted that do­mes­tic busi­ness for ap­parel brands have on aver­age grown by 9 per cent in value dur­ing the first half of 2013. The rea­sons for this growth are : in­crease in dis­pos­able in­come, in­creased prod­uct de­mand in the women’s cloth­ing seg­ment, fash­ion is in­creas­ingly be­com­ing a form of self-ex­pres­sion, rapid ur­ban­i­sa­tion/ Western­i­sa­tion of the In­dian youth and the con­tin­ued rise of or­gan­ised re­tail across the coun­try.

“Speed, flex­i­bil­ity and ef­fi­ciency are the key fac­tors that the ap­parel and life­style in­dus­try ex­pects from lo­gis­tics providers. Saf­ex­press works with retailers & man­u­fac­tur­ers to de­velop sup­ply chain sys­tems that are al­ways ready to re­spond to ever-chang­ing mar­ket re­quire­ments. The com­pany makes sure that the prod­ucts don’t just re­main idle in the ware­houses, but en­sures their de­liv­ery to the mar­ket faster so that retailers can take ad­van­tage of the lat­est trends,” ob­served Kanaujia.

He un­der­lined that Saf­ex­press pro­vides in­no­va­tive lo­gis­tics ser­vices to the ap­parel and life­style in­dus­try that help speed up in­ven­to­ries to mar­ket. The firm pro­vides sup­ply chain ser­vices that ef­fi­ciently man­age ma­te­rial flow, from stock to shelf, and en­ables man­u­fac­tur­ers and retailers, to fo­cus on their core ac­tiv­i­ties. Saf­ex­press has state-of-the-art in­fra­struc­ture and a huge net­work across In­dia. The com­pany of­fers ser­vices that in­clude ev­ery­thing from sup­ply chain strat­egy and net­work de­sign­ing to in-store lo­gis­tics.

We in­tend to cre­ate 2 mil­lion square feet of ad­di­tional ware­hous­ing space across the coun­try in the next cou­ple of years. Th­ese Lo­gis­tics Parks will sup­port our fash­ion lo­gis­tics en­deav­ors in a big way

“The so­lu­tions lie to a large ex­tent in the hands of our Govern­ment, which could do its bit in terms of de­vel­op­ing a world class in­fra­struc­ture to en­hance pan-In­dia con­nec­tiv­ity. Also, the reg­u­la­tory hur­dles need to be min­imised by the Govern­ment, if in case swift eco­nomic growth has to be brought about to our coun­try. Re­gard­ing skill de­vel­op­ment, both the sec­tor as well as the Govern­ment can join hands and work to­gether for de­vel­op­ing a large num­ber of pro­grammes, which can help cre­ate skilled man­power for the in­dus­try,” said Kanaujia.

He also main­tained that the most im­por­tant ex­pec­ta­tion is the pro­vid­ing of in­dus­try sta­tus to the Sup­ply Chain and Lo­gis­tics Sec­tor in In­dia. For­ma­tion of a sin­gle Reg­u­la­tory Body to look into the con­cerns of lo­gis­tics sec­tor will im­mensely ben­e­fit the econ­omy and stream­line pro­ce­dures and pro­cesses.

“Also, we ex­pect an in­crease in the bud­get on in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment. The govern­ment should pri­ori­tise the cre­ation of spe­cial tax pro­vi­sions to im­prove the level of pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to him, a Uni­form Toll Pol­icy is an­other vi­tal need of to­day. Mul­ti­ple toll points on high­ways re­duce ef­fi­ciency and ad­versely af­fect the turn­around time of trucks. More­over, the lack of uni­for­mity in toll charges cre­ates ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the cost struc­ture. A cen­tralised toll mech­a­nism is needed to en­sure uni­for­mity in toll charges paid by trucker driv­ers at var­i­ous check points. This would lead to re­duc­tion in stop­page time and will cre­ate greater ef­fi­ciency.

“Fi­nally, we ex­pect higher level of au­to­ma­tion to be brought in while han­dling doc­u­men­ta­tion, along­side im­ple­men­ta­tion of GST. Doc­u­men­ta­tion needs to be com­put­erised and min­imised, so that less num­ber of forms are needed to be filled at check­posts. This would greatly en­hance the ef­fi­ciency of lo­gis­tics op­er­a­tions,” Kanaujia con­cluded.